I like to think some awards are less bad than others.
See Autocar’s blog[1] about how they voted for the Car Of The Year award which they do every year. It seems to be reasonably transparent.
Be very careful with 'X of the Year' verbiage, especially at the end of the year. There are many publications that use this verbiage for awards, and stumbling upon them via Google or other means almost always results in biased and paid for opinions.